Apollo 13 - the Almost Oops!

[MIflyer]

Watching the Dragon spacecraft parachute recovery yesterday brought to mind something a friend of mine told me several years ago.

My friend had worked for NASA on the Apollo program and said that when they got the Apollo 13 Command Module back they examined it and found something strange.

One of the astronauts on that mission apparently had become concerned over automatic systems failing and had come up with a back-up approach to deploying the parachutes. He had wired in one of the unused switches to provide a manual back-up for parachute deployment. The manual switch turned out to be unnecessary, which was a very good thing. Instead of wiring it to the parachute deployment ordnance he had connected it to the parachute jettison system. That would have been a tragic end to a magnificent "save."

 

[vikingBerserker]

Ouch!

 

[Gnomey]

Whoops!

 

[Eva Braun]

The first problems with the equipment of the service module began on the third day of the flight, in the morning, at 047: 00: 07 flight time. When the ship flew 330,000 kilometers, the crew conducted a report for the viewers, introducing them to the ship and their life, and when the report was ended everything has begun...